Mistress of Time
by FlowerofAdversity
Summary: Taking place not long after "Birth of a Newborn Light", Amy finds herself faced with the task of how to defeat Destrada, if such a thing is possible. She needs to think of something quick while the others restore what has been lost.


Mistress of Time

Synopsis: A continuation to "Birth of a Newborn Light". The "Clock Princess", as Amy is so endearingly called by her parents and her big sister, has to use her ability to slow Destrada down from its rampage. The more he ingests, the more powerful he becomes. Can the Warrior of Time distract Destrada enough for Aelita, Pascal, Taelia, the Royal Family, Emily and Michael begin 'rebuilding' the landscape and environs of Lyoko before nothingness exists in its place ?

Chapter 1--No End to Devastation

Overseers, Elders and Lyokians had little if any time to react. If they didn't move out of the way of Destrada's path, they were ingested, their only hope of returning to the world they knew in the same form was through Pascal, Jeramie, Aelita, Taelia, Emily, Amy and the Royal Family of Lyoko themselves. They were the keys to "healing" the damage that had been done and making a "back up" in situations like this. Jeramie had done this before when XANA had been under the thumb of the manipulative Umbra. With no will of his own, Umbra commanded him to "wipe the slate clean", but he hadn't counted on Jeramie's ingenuity. He had also forgotten that Aelita herself was the first real envoy from Lyoko to Earth.

Destrada was nearly impossible to hold off. No matter how many Warriors there were, they were nothing more than ants compared to Destrada's size. Demonic in appearance and relentless in destruction, Destrada didn't care who or what stood in its way to create a world of misery and oblivion.

Amy had never been the type to become angry, but seeing so much death had almost been too much for her caring heart. Like her sister, she _hated _seeing people arguing or fighting. Most of all, she loathed war because she knew it brought nothing but sadness, pain and worst of all; innocent people were killed.

"Keep trying to lure him away from the people ! We've had enough death already…These people can't stand up to him like the Overseers, Elders and Lady Oleander's court…", Amy said as she helped her fellow Warriors attack the impenetrable force. Destrada didn't feel any of their attacks, nor did it seem distracted from trampling and burning everything in its path.

"We're trying, but it's exhausting. Nothing seems to do any good !", Ulrich snapped, turning to face her.

"Don't _yell_ at her. She's trying to help us.", Yumi reproved her soon-to-be fiancé.

"Don't get angry either. Destrada feeds from that.", Amy warned. Before Ulrich had the chance to respond, he realized he was in the wrong. Destrada was radically stronger than all of them put together. Besides, getting mad wasn't going to help the situation.

Amy thought she would try some different tactics to deal with Destrada. Using her time spell, she believed she could hold Destrada long enough for the healers of the group to start healing what they could and rebuilding what was lost. Destrada was too focused on blazing a path toward Stability. If Stability was thrown into chaos, then all would be lost. Immediately she struck her scythe upon the ground, stopping Destrada's movement. The Warriors were unaffected.

"Jeramie, Pascal, Aelita, Taelia…see if you can find Xana, Oleander and Diana. I haven't seen them since the beginning of this battle.", Amy said. She had no time to worry about them at the moment. The other Warriors were trying to use their abilities to help the Lyokoians that had been left out of the pathway of Destrada's fire, claws and atomic eye-lasers. If they could remain grounded for a while, perhaps their home fronts would be protected. The Lyokoians _were_ adept at creating firewalls against such viruses as Destrada but he was a _worm_. Worms cannot be destroyed so easily, and are insatiable when it comes to information, whatever form it is in.

Amy stood in front of Distrada's hideous form, feeling the sorrow that was coming from it.

"How could one fragment of Dr. Fujita's program have caused _this _?", she thought to herself. She couldn't even wrap her mind around it, but she remembered anger was a powerful emotion and there were a lot of depressed, lonely, agitated, even _murderous_ people using the internet. Feeling anger was going to be its source, Destrada became increasingly more formidable. She felt hopeless for the first time in her life. It was an empty, sinking feeling she couldn't quite describe, let alone one she wanted residing in her heart for too long. It was unfamiliar, and quite unsettling.

Chapter 2--Excelleration

As Amy kept the colossal monstrosity paused for as long as she could, the Warriors she sent to the royal palace arrived without incident while the others separated into two groups: those who were assisting the Overseers and Elders for Destrada's fury and the others who were gathering the survivors to their fire walled homes, hopefully to avoid being trampled underfoot by Destrada itself.

When Jeramie and the others met the royal family, they were locked in stasis.

"Looks like they used a spell of their own to avoid Destrada's wrath.", Aelita stated, observantly. Jeramie nodded.

"I can snap them out of it.", Pascal said, using a counter spell to wake them.

"I over calculated…", Diana said, a bit sadly.

"Don't worry. You are safe…at least for the moment.", Jeramie said, a bit sadly.

"Who's taking care of everything else ?", Oleander questioned. That is exactly what XANA was concerned about.

"The others split up. Half of the group is helping the Lyokoians, the other is taking care of Stability.", Taelia responded.

"What about the monster ?", Diana asked.

"Oh, you mean _Destrada ?", _Michael replied. Diana raised her eyebrow momentarily. It was an appropriate name for the being that had come so unexpectedly and began ripping everything asunder with no remorse.

"Amy, my sister…she's taking care of it.", Emily said, wondering how she was doing. For some strange reason, she felt Amy becoming weak. She said a little prayer, hopefully thinking such a thing would give her strength.

"We can't just stand here shooting the breeze ! We have to get these to the mainframe !", Pascal piped up, getting a little impatient.

"We can get there, but it'll be perilous. We have to take the tubes to the core. It isn't quite safe for either of us, but our transports there should provide us with protection from the digital sea.", XANA said. Everyone took hold of one another's hands and was telepathically transported to the tubes, which led to rapid transit submarines appropriately called "RTS". Within moments, XANA and the royal family had taken the information that had been put on disk to the 'brain' of the core, and put it in the disk reading drive.

"Now what ?", everyone but the royals wondered. The establishment recognized the information, but the lot of them had to leave immediately.

"Back to the RTS ! Run !", XANA shouted as the air around them began to become cold and the digital sea began to rise. Fortunately for them, they had been able to get to their RTS before water surrounded the area to cool the matrix core.

The spell on Destrada was beginning to wear off and Amy had a flash of brilliance. What she had done had effected Destrada enough to weaken it a bit, but it wasn't enough to deter its pathway of peril.

"I've had enough out of you, demon.", she muttered under her breath hotly. With the others coming back to assist her, she would need all the help she could get to distract Destrada back to Lyoko, or in this case, what was left of it.

Chapter 3--Decline

Destrada seemed annoyed by waking up groggily from the spell. He flicked the Warriors away as if they were fleas, but they were able to come back from the attack, uniting as one.

"This is getting old ! Haven't the others returned from the cortex yet ?", William questioned, becoming concerned. He could see that there was regeneration occurring, but it was _abysmally _slow. It would take far too much time to complete the regeneration procedure, and with Destrada awakening, it seemed that there wasn't any hope for _any _of the Warriors. Yet, Amy stood in front of them and raised her scythe.

"What is she _doing _?", Tamiya asked, completely confused at what was going on.

"It's another spell, but this one is different than the last one she used.", Emily said, recognizing the subtle changes from her typical 'deceleration' spell. Destrada roared, escaping the tether the Warriors had it in and began thundering toward Stability but it didn't get far. It's joints, muscles and facial features began to wither.

Destrada growled as it turned around to fight the Warriors. It continued taking swipes at them and knocking them to the ground, despite the fact it was aging so rapidly.

"Don't give up !", Jim reminded them as he got back up to his feet after having his nose bloodied by the beast. All of the Warriors were looking pretty ragged, their weapons scratched and their clothing ripped, bruised and scratched from constant battle.

"We aren't, dad ! This war is far from over !", Amy responded, holding the spell until she could no longer take the strain and passed out. Luckily, both parents caught her as she descended to the ground. She was incapacitated for the moment, but Suzanne kept her shielded from any possible fire or laser attacks from the weakening Destrada.

"It cannot be ! Time cannot be the weakness I possess !", Destrada groaned as it continued to degenerate. As the attacks continued to rip apart his skin and sever his bones and muscles, Destrada dissolved into particles, getting trapped into an airtight jar that Pascal had created from free-floating logic.

"How did you do that ?", Jeramie asked, bewildered.

"You can manipulate data outside of Lyoko, I can manipulate it _within_ Lyoko.", Pascal said. The jar itself was sent to Elder Luna, who would seal the jar in cold storage deep within Lyoko's Tundra Sector.

"And thus ends Destrada's reign…I hope. I guess Amy expended a bit too much energy.", Aelita mentioned. Amy soon recuperated, happy to see her plan had worked and Destrada had been defeated. Despite ebullient attitudes and gladness in the fact that the battle had finally ended, the Warriors were enervated. Using what power they could, they returned and allowed what healing the second squadron had done to begin.

Chapter 4--The Return of Order

It seemed that after the tumultuous battle with the Destrada, things would return to normal. The sky cleared up and the sun's rays began to poke through the clouds. Although the Warriors couldn't stay for their triumphal feast from the gracious survivors, they knew that their efforts hadn't gone unnoticed.

The core began the revival of Lyoko and little by little everything began renewing itself. Firewalls were safer and sturdier. Even _Trojans_ would be no match for the fortification the inhabitants were installing to make certain their lives would be safe from possible viral harm. They had learned their lesson through the challenges of near apocalypse, but it had taught them to be more vigilant and dutiful in keeping constant backups rather than allowing someone else to be their 'guardian angels'.

Amy felt she had proven herself quite a bit with her fellow comrades. They had congratulated her on her brilliant tactics, noting that she had wisdom beyond her years.

"I'm merely choosing what has been given to me as my fate. Not all of us have it laid out so neatly, but I must say, having spontaneity would be stellar if that was an option for me.", she said, chuckling a bit. Her candor was bittersweet, but understandable. Everyone hugged her, thanking her again.

"You know, all that fighting made me _famished_.", Odd stated out of the blue.

"Everything makes you famished, silly !", Sissi added, mock punching him in the arm, but the others had to agree. Everything was about eating when it came to Odd, but actually it was more than that. When they were together at the table, they had a sense of family and oneness again. They weren't just feeding themselves but each other, talking about the events of the day, the events to come and their thoughts and dreams…looking to brighter and happier times.

Pascal had finished his studies for the day when he received an email from Diana. Apparently all was well once more and everything was back to normal. It had taken a few days but with the updates the Lyokoians had made should ever a catastrophe such as the one with the worm Destrada occur again, they would be prepared to start reparations in mere nanoseconds. All those that had been temporarily erased had been restored completely as if they had never been deleted at all. They were grateful to have their lives back and live without worrying how they would spend their lives. The email asked if the Warriors would be so kind to return for a celebratory dinner, since they never had the chance to do so after the battle had ended.

Pascal, excitedly, gave his parents the news of what he had heard, and forwarded the RSVP email to his friends, hoping for a positive response. Before he knew it, everyone was calling the Bellpois family in preparation to return to Lyoko to reunite and celebrate their victory.

Chapter 5--Homecoming

No sooner had the Warriors arrived to Lyoko had they been greeted by fanfare, cheers, luminous spectacular displays reading 'Victors' and more food than they had ever seen.

"Now this is what I am talking about !", Odd said, beginning to make his destination to the large rectangular table in the emerald veldt.

"One moment ! We have to wait, don't be in such a rush !", Sissi said, keeping a hold of his collar. Odd pouted slightly.

"Party pooper.", Odd muttered, crossing his arms and sticking his tongue out at her in a rather infantile way. Sissi simply laughed. She knew though he was putting on a 'snubbed' front, he was actually teasing her and understood, like all good things, one had to be patient and celebrate as a unit, rather than by himself.

The celebration was larger than they ever believed it would be. Many of the friends were touched by the outpouring of the people they had helped to save. Lyoko had been repaired and even more beautiful and impressive than it had been before, if that was possible. Everything seemed to gleam.

Although the true heroine was Amy, she took her victory very humbly.

"We couldn't have done all of this without our newest recruit.", Jeramie mentioned.

"Her tactics are flawless.", Taelia added. All Amy could do was blush, and she became even more embarrassed when she had to give a speech.

"You say that I am the real heroine of the hour. The recreation of Lyoko could not have happened without the help of my friends, sister and parents. I am lucky to have them in my life and know that together we can accomplish anything. Apart, we are still together even in our hearts. Friendship is our common thread which only grows stronger over time.", Amy said.

After Amy's short speech, the Lyokians and everyone else applauded emphatically.

"Truer words couldn't have been said. You have such a way with expressing yourself. I envy that.", Yumi said, hugging her from the side.

"We're really lucky to have you as one of us.", Millie said, affectionately as she kissed her friend's cheek.

"I second that, Sis.", Emily agreed.

The rest of the evening was spent with song, feasting and of course, plenty of fireworks to light the nighttime sky. There was even a parade held in the honor of the Warriors depicting their struggle against Destrada. Before leaving, they were all presented with golden laurel circlets for bravery and valor.

"We are honored, Diana.", Michael mentioned, bowing.

"We shall always remain first and foremost, your protectors.", William added.

"But more importantly, your friends.", Tamiya said, wisely. They agreed with her point of view, amazed at how deeply profound it was. And although it was bittersweet to see them leave, the Lyokoians knew they were always connected by the Internet and the thread of friendship.

Epilogue 

School went on as planned and the students were knee-deep in their homework as usual. Amy had been elevated another grade because of her IQ. True, she would have to leave behind many of the friends she had made at Kadic Academy. She would be the first 12 year old to start college and possibly one of the youngest children to start thinking about her Masters and PhD. This didn't leave her much time to consider childhood, but that didn't mean she had given up her inner child. She still enjoyed playing with her older sister and younger friends and hoped her creativity would be appreciated as much as it had in situations with them. She was sure, though a challenging road lay ahead of her, she would always be supported and uplifted in anything she did. It wasn't an easy job being the clock princess, but it was more than worth the reward of saving the future in the end.

The End


End file.
